Wednesday, July 31, 2013

JLENS to hover above Washington D.C. We had two above Camp Victory in Baghdad when I was there in 2006 and 2008; the ground station for one was in my 'back yard'.

I'd be interested in knowing just how they plan to do it, though. Not only is 10,000 feet of cable a lot of cable (JLENS is tethered), it is also a potential hazard to the aircraft in the area flying below that altitude.
UNEMPLOYMENT RATES up in 90 percent of U.S. cities. At the rate people are bailing out of cities (see Detroit, where the rate is one person leaving every 22 minutes), this one's somewhat hard to believe.

RELATED: Chicago's next?
RANDOM THOUGHTS on Sen. Al Franken from the retirement lane: Americans paid a terrible price to remove Franken's 'comedic talent' from Hollywood....
SWISS PILOT thrills EAA AirVenture show by soaring with jet pack.

OBAMA: It wasn't Bush's fault after all; it was Reagan's fault.

Delusions.
THOMAS SOWELL: "If the things that the Left wants to control — institutions and government policy — are not the most important factors in the world’s problems, then what role is there for the Left?"
THE FUTURE OF OBAMACARE. Well, it will keep the costs down....
NEW YORK'S "GREENEST" SKYSCRAPER is actually its biggest energy hog.
THOMAS SOWELL on the Left’s central delusion: Its devotion to central planning has endured from the French Revolution to Obamacare. And no amount of evidence will shake that delusion.
I WAS REALLY, REALLY EXCITED ABOUT OBAMACARE until I realized everything I thought about ObamaCare was totally wrong.
AN EMERGING TREND IN MEDICAL CARE.
The doctor might be the same, but her bill’s going to be higher.

A strong trend of hospitals buying up physicians practices as well as hospital mergers is threatening to also drive up costs to patients — at least in the short term.

A key factor in that consolidation trend is doctors now are willing to work for someone else to get rid of the hassle of paperwork, fighting with insurance companies, increased overhead costs, and other duties that keep them away from patients.

“What you hear over and over again is: ‘I just want to practice medicine,’ ” said Shane Jackson, president of physicians staffing service LocumTenens.com.

Jackson and others said the trend toward doctors working for hospitals is being fueled by middle-age and older doctors who like the idea of spending less time on non-medicine-related work, and younger doctors who “place a lot of value on work-life balance.”
I'm hoping that more and more doctors will simply reject health insurance altogether and go to cash-only fee for service. Perhaps then health 'care' will return to the catastrophic health insurance model.
IMMIGRANTS ARE ASSIMILATING, just like always. And the 'immigration problem' is, in actuality, a border control problem.
MARK STEYN on 'Weiner worship'.
TERRAFUGIA TRANSITION makes first public flight at EAA AirVenture.

Tuesday, July 30, 2013

THOMAS SOWELL: Progress in race relations isn’t achieved by having minority leaders.
MORNING EXAMINER: Is there anything the Republican establishment won’t let Obama get away with?
SPENGLER: Dumb, dumber, and ... dumberer.

Liberals, as a group, have several unfortunate tendencies. The first is that they know it all (demonstrably false). The second is to believe that everyone is (or should be) like them; i.e., if something is good, or desirable for them, then it must be good, or desirable, for all. The third is their unreasoning fear of risk; for them, no risk is too much risk. The fourth is a complete inability to comprehend that actions always have unforseen consequences. And the last is aquasi-religious faith that only government can protect them from their own actions.

Or, as Instapundit put it very succintly, "Lefties generally assume that everyone is as messed up and irresponsible as they are."

As individuals, I would advocate leaving them alone as they will self-Darwin soon enough. In government, however, Liberals are downright dangerous, as the Obama response to Egypt (And Syria. And Iran. And ....) is clearly demonstrating.
ACCORDING TO OBAMA, the Keystone XL pipeline will create 'only 50 permanent jobs'. On Fox News' Special Report, the Weekly Standard's Stephen Hayes wryly noted that "it's 50 more than Solyndra created."
HUH? Obama pivots to jobs (again), then downplays the number of jobs that could be created by the Keystone pipeline.
ELIOT SPITZER, “Umpire of Capitalism.” On the bright side, maybe his election will drive Wall Street to, say, Dallas.